e villagers to quit their
old life; but of course there were other causes, less conspicuous here
than they have been elsewhere, yet operative here too. Free Trade,
whilst it made the new thrift possible, at the same time effectually
undermined many of the old modes of earning a living; and more
destructive still has been the gradual adoption of machinery for rural
work. We are shocked to think of the unenlightened peasants who broke
up machines in the riots of the eighteen-twenties, but we are only now
beginning to see fully what cruel havoc the victorious machines played
with the defeated peasants. Living men were "scrapped"; and not only
living men. What was really demolished in that struggle was the country
skill, the country lore, the country outlook; so that now, though we
have no smashed machinery, we have a people in whom the pride of life is
broken down: a shattered section of the community; a living engine whose
fly-wheel of tradition is in fragments, and will not revolve again. Let
us mark the finality of that destruction before going further. Whatever
prosperity may return to our country places, it will not be on the old
terms. The "few reforms," whether in the direction of import duties, or
small holdings, or "technical education" in ploughing or fruit-pruning
or forestry or sheep-shearing, can never in themselves be a substitute
for the lost peasant traditions, because they are not the same kind of
thing. For those traditions were no institutions set up and cherished by
outside authority. Associated though they were with industrial and
material well-being, they meant much more than that to country folk;
they lived in the popular tastes and habits, and they passed on
spontaneously from generation to generation, as a sort of rural
civilization. And you cannot create that sort of thing by Act of
Parliament, or by juggling with tariffs, or by school lessons. An
imitation of the shell of it might be set up; but the life of it is
gone, not to be restored. That is the truth of the matter. The old rural
outlook of England is dead; and the rural English, waiting for something
to take its place, for some new tradition to grow up amongst them, are
in a state of stagnation.

In looking for signs of new growth, it must be observed that not all
steps in the transition are equally significant. Amongst the
modifications of habit slowly proceeding in the village to-day, there
are some which should be regarded rather as a fi